Everyone knows what an Olympic champion looks like, and
apparently, how to behave like one.

It turns out that the stereotypical image of a victor — head
tilted back, chest puffed out and arms in the air — may be an innate human
response to success.

A new study found that blind athletes who have never seen
such a display make similar gestures of pride as sighted athletes when
they win, and also slump their shoulders and narrow their chests in shame
when they lose.

The findings imply that expressions of pride and shame may
have evolved to be programmed into human behavior.

Researchers Jessica Tracy of the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and David Matsumoto of San Francisco State
University analyzed photographs taken during judo competitions in the 2004
Olympic and Paralympic Games. They found that physical reactions to winning and
losing among sighted people, congenitally blind people (those who have been
blind since birth), and people who went blind later in life were notably
similar.

The scientists detail their results in the Aug. 11 issue of
the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.

In general, when blind and sighted competitors won, they would
expand their bodies, and when they lost, they would pull themselves inward.

The only differences the scientists saw were in the
expression of shame. Sighted athletes from Western countries that value
individualism, such as the United
States, were less likely to show shame than
congenitally blind Western athletes or sighted or blind athletes from cultures
that value collectivism, such as Asian countries.

"My read was that the Westerners felt shame in those
situations but they were inhibiting those responses, and I think that is supported
by the blind findings," Tracy
told LiveScience. "In American
and other Western cultures, we're taught from a very early age not to show
shame — it's stigmatized — whereas in the East it's appropriate to show shame
in a major Olympic failure, for instance."

People who are blind from birth likely haven't learned to
suppress their natural physical reaction to shame because they haven't seen how
others from their culture react in those situations.

The researchers suggest that these universal expressions may
have evolved as a form of social communication.

"With pride, the original function may have been
actually, if I make myself larger that tells others, 'I'm someone to watch out
for. Hey, I'm dominant, powerful, in control,'" Tracy said. "Over the course of
evolution, humans would acquire the innate propensity to associate this display
with success."

"There are many times where it's not that adaptive to
show shame — essentially you're saying, 'I just screwed up,'" Tracy said. "But
if you really feel yourself weaker than an adversary, and you could convey
that, that you agree, 'You're more powerful than me, I submit to you, don’t
hurt me, and we both save resources compared to if we had to fight.' My guess
is that’s why it's still around."

Previous research has shown that these pride and shame gestures
are widely recognized around the world in many different cultures. But this is
the first study to probe whether the expressions are innate or learned — i.e.
nature vs. nurture.

The discovery that congenitally blind people show the same
behaviors implies that they may be part of human nature.

"Here are people who have never seen people express
this," Tracy
said. "The only possible explanation you could make is, well, maybe their
parents physically move their bodies in this way to teach them. Given the
specificity of the response — we're not just talking about a simple arm
stretch, but chest expansion and shoulders pulling back and everything — to me
that seems like a less parsimonious suggestion than it being innate."

The researchers now want to compare the gestures they found
in humans to behaviors among other primates.

"Primatologists have found that chimps show an inflated
display: When the alpha chimp is about to fight, he puffs his shoulders and
walks in a cocky gate." Tracy
said. "Submission displays have been documented that involve cowering,
lowering of the body. That's pretty similar to hunching the shoulders and the
shame display. But there's a difference between these anecdotal observations
and an empirical study. No one's coded a bunch of chimps and seen what are the
exact behaviors you see in these situations."

Clara Moskowitz

Clara has a bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from Wesleyan University, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has written for both Space.com and Live Science.